Supernova
by greysw
Summary: There must be some way out of here... but then again, nobody ever said you had to slink out through the door like a frakkin' human, either. A Cavil story. Warning: contains major spoilers for episode 4x16: "No Exit".


"The mind is its own place, and in itself  
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

-Milton, _Paradise Lost_

---

John Cavil stands in the control room of his ship, watching the battle unfold in the data-stream. His enemies are so many, now, and he stands alone against them. Even his only friends, Simon and Doral, have left him.

His brother-copies are trying to get the FTL drive spun up. It reminds him of that stupid song his mother used to sing to him, after Leo beat him at wrestling _again_: run away, John, run away, and live to fight another day. But he won't, not this time, because it's already too late; his own family and the humans together are too much for him to fight, today or any day. He is tired and hurt and angry, tortured to his limit by the weak, hateful body he was given.

Cavil wants to die. Better to be nothing, forever, than to be _this_, even for one more day.

"Radiological alarm!" cries his brother, panicking. Cavil hardly hears him.

His beautiful dream still burns within him, the only thing he ever wanted: to be a true machine, to be whole and strong at last, to have a body that fits his fierce and restless mind. He will never have it, now, and that hurts him more than the light does -- they've shot _so many_ nukes at him, everything they've got, in a big, blazing send-off that fills the data-stream with brilliance.

_Really, all that for little ol' me? That's frakkin' ridiculous. It's gonna be the biggest damn explosion since the Eye of Jupiter_, Cavil thinks.

It's sort of funny, actually, and he laughs as the light tears him apart.

As his synapses begin to fry, death stretches the moment into an eternity; it hurts so much, to die broken and wrong. His hopeless dream burns him and burns him, still shining inside him, like a star.

Like a _supernova_.

His body falls away -- it's still there, of course, in this one last moment before dissolution, but he cannot feel it now. He is lost in his own mind, as his brain attempts to make some sense of the utter disaster that's befallen him.

All that is left to him now is his dream. It is so much a part of him that it cannot die, not until he does. Instead, it fills him up, swelling until there's nothing else left. Now, as he is finally freed from his detestable body, his dream no longer burns him.

The light and fire of [the nuclear blast/his beloved supernova] is there, all around him, and he feels it, truly, _directly_, as he'd always wanted to. It is warm and good against him and inside him, like a fresh cup of coffee with sunlight and bright blood stirred into it. It has colors that don't even _exist_ for mankind, such as melted-cherry and swirl-cum, gamma-blue and white-black. There are sounds beyond anything his feeble ears could have beheld; his world howls with wonderfully dissonant radiation-song, and beneath it, faintly, he can hear the very stars oscillating. The smell of it is overwhelmingly good, too, delicious beyond description, and it tastes like everything he's ever hungered for, rich with plutonium and dark matter. He savors its rare flavor, as his heart fills and fills with a joy so great that it squeezes all the pain out of him.

Oh, at _last_.

For one long moment, Cavil stands as a perfect machine, wrought in plasma-platinum and atomic gold, experiencing the beginning of a new world. It is more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. _He_ is more beautiful, more _right_. Without his body, he is broken no longer.

_Frak, I shoulda done this ages ago!_ he thinks to himself, one last proud and joyous thought before his silica relays melt and fuse.

As they do, Cavil feels [the explosion's shock front/the solar wind] flowing over him, through him, scattering his atoms like dust. They are all that's left of him, and they ride on the wind, out into the galaxy, streaming silently amidst bits of Basestar and fissile elements.

Over time, some of Cavil's atoms will fuse with young planets and newborn asteroids; others will nestle into veins of Tillium ore or settle to the bottom of rivers. Still more of them will float forever in space, never quite coming to rest, until the universe itself dies.

A small handful of them will someday become a tiny part of the new race the humans and Cylons will create together -- a grudging and nigh-insignificant contribution, in keeping with Cavil's low opinion of the idea.

And the fruit of his dream, ripened by the shockwave of a great and glorious blast, will strike the first spark of a brand new sun.

It will burn, ever-bright, until the next supernova.


End file.
